here is a list of my servant sheets(new and improved format for my servant sheets)
Come explore the White Library, and reach the bottom of this Abyss
Fate / White Memoria
A new FGO NP table
funny vamp ends 7 years of gacha torture
YT: FGO Gameplay , YT: FGO OST, Twitch FGO Gacha, Chaldea Archive Project - Complete
No, but I hail from a fandom (well, was a part of a fandom) who certainly act the part and their nerdrage was contagious.
I was absent for a reason, but it's weekend!
I do support the idea of them going by alternate names, because people are going to be prejudiced and in Japan, it gets much worse.
- - - Updated - - -
That explains the the daggers on my back.
I don't know how much of an unpopular opinion this is, considering the subject matter is more or less out of sight, out of mind. Which I guess could be rather telling on how superfluous it seems considering current direction.
I think I'm at the point where if the Tsukihime remake falls through, I won't be in arms about that. I guess because I have a deteriorating level of faith that Nasu can recapture the magic of when he did create Tsukihime. I think he can't do it.
Tsukihime remake has always been a promise since forever, and it was important to think about what that exactly meant. A Tsukihime just updated with new visuals, character design, and CGs would honestly have been very accepted by the majority of the fanbase; or even yet, an adaptation through a more popular, accessible medium i.e. anime, would probably have been a more profitable choice in terms of exposure.
But even then, Nasu struck me as the type that wouldn't have been satisfied with just a remaster. He's articulate and aware enough on the challenges of writing overall, and recognizes on how initial writing Tsukihime was an endeavor for a rookie writer and the state of mind and feeling then was especially important for establishing what Tsukihime was all about and what Type Moon meant to him then.
So we can say safely that the remake was probably going to be a new version of Tsukihime, that reflects Nasu the writer now. The little tidbits we have and miscellaneous details in the past show that Nasu has brainstormed and speculated potential follow through and original concepts, even if they would ultimately not come to pass.
With current TM direction and how this is no longer the solo Nasu show, the world he imagined tonally and thematically has drifted away from what was established in the original core works. I must temper my dissatisfaction with the acknowledgement that writers will inevitably change and that will be portrayed in their writing. The man himself has admitted this, talking on how the angst he carried then was something he wanted to throw out there, that this was something he wanted to say. The man now is currently in one of the most safest creative spaces imaginable; a billion dollar franchise, the reputation built up over the years. The man has made it.
Much has already been talked before by other people on how this affects the creative output of TM overall. With those earlier works, they were ultimately deeply personal stories, and not the grandiose stage that's established now. Nasu has mentioned at certain points over the years a rather vague assessment on where he is with writing the new remake and juggling that with the current output now. You can sorta see some discontent hidden in the statements made, particular around GO; the potential abdication at the supposed conclusion of the Lostbelt saga, his assurance that the TM today is still fundamentally the TM you fell in love with back then. It makes me wonder if Nasu feels trapped by the leviathan he has created, whether it be the story or the business model promoted by GO. There is no hard proof of this, though Nasu still strikes me as a savvy enough writer to understand what potential downsides and implications going through with this current direction does.
Nasu has always been a emotional writer, someone who stereo typically writes like a madman once inspired. It's partly why we have been getting more and more Fate content, for better and for worse. He famously mentioned on how typically the average writer only has a few stories to tell and then that's it. I think we can all agree that there are core cliches and tropes Nasu continually employs for the world of TM so far. It's a charge that I suspect is a source of anxiety for Nasu the writer.
Does he still have that edge, that driving impulse that compelled him to be an artist? Can he make this Tsukihime the same proverbial lightning in a bottle, or will this new story be reflective of current TM direction now, the man as he is now? The second answer is what makes me nervous.
This honestly comes across as he sold out, that the TM corporation is like Disney creatively concerning franchises, slick marketing and promotion of products meant to capitalize on manipulating fans to shell out to maximize profits, and mining your previous artistic creations to a husk of what it once was. It's why I'm skeptical that the remake will be this revival, that it won't reflect the current direction I find so much to be dissatisfied with, and that it will be still the Tsukihime that Nasu lovingly came up with.
I didn't want to post out a shitpost like lol GO bad. I still think it's important to sincerely explain what it is you think is wrong, what concerns, what you perceived the message to be. And honestly.
It would be great to be proven wrong.
I'd throw a hate into this strange fake discussion but honestly, my reason for starting it was because I was starved for prototype content and jumped into it when I realized Ayala was a relevant party and Narita's brand of writing baits me no matter how many 100 new plot threads he opens so I'm too biased
- - - Updated - - -
I guess I'm should be grateful I got into this franchise when it was already neck deep in fate
To be honest, I am starting to feel we might definitely never get a remake.
It's not even the lack of spirit concerning present Nasu: everything in the wider TMverse has gotten so unwieldy he runs the risk of double crossing himself if he decides to keep no tabs whatsoever on what's happening in the works where he did little. Reminder that Fate almost was an otome game!
It's not just about like, updated visuals. You also need to make sure to convey the same feeling of wonder you felt when you first played the story. Since nostalgia talks strongly (and brutally in my case), this alone already makes it an uphill battle. You could always have a writer that decides maybe the original needed an overhaul or major changes, but you could upset the fanbase big time if you do. Like I can already see people harping on Arcueid looking like a preppy Beverly Hills schoolgirl instead of the passionate, Hepburn-esque heroine she was supposed to represent. AND THIS GOES SOLELY BECAUSE OF HER REDESIGN. People. Are. Judgmental. After all, didn't we get a lot of flak from Zero fans when some of us said they liked GO (which does suck in my opinion)?
I feel the issue is that Nasu essentially became a Disney surrogate: he went from creator to overseer, but his works have now outgrown him. Any attempt to change it will alienate old fans and new supporters.
Like even if the people liked it, there's no guarantee it's going to be the same people. Even if it ends up staying as a similar work to the original, we're still going to get rage from the new fans and the old fans might not be there anymore (development hell dashes all hopes). In other words, the reboot will certainly represent a major risk either way. The problem seems to be Nasu knows and doesn't know if he should just let the franchise die and focus on essentially turning Fate into a Shared Universe, retcon the thing away or even decide to go ahead at the risk of something going bad.
Someone like me decided to stay around until we had news of whether it would come through or not, but mostly because we need to see what happens and then judge for ourselves if maybe he hasn't written himself into a corner or if he has, whether he can power through it or pitch the new version and have us buy it.
Also, extraordinarily unpopular opinion: we should be on Xbox.
I guess this is unpopular but I honestly never cared for the FSN cast. I couldn't get into the characters. They just didn't have the personality types/themes/character narratives that I like.
Like, to elaborate, I don't hate anyone but I don't love anyone either. And it's the fact that I don't love anyone that it just doesn't make me feel anything.
Last edited by jennajayfeather; June 20th, 2020 at 03:52 PM.
To me that doesn't really matter since I thought the whole concept behind Fate was pretty dumb in the first place. I'm more interested on how they use said setting to portray and develop the characters and themes.Plus Battle Royale (2000) will forever be the best "BR type story" and nothing will ever change that.
Most of the time, the premise barely matters in relative to its execution. You can have a synopsis as dull and clichéd as K-ON's yet still make something great out of it which is what the folks at Kyoani managed to accomplish.
here is a list of my servant sheets(new and improved format for my servant sheets)
Come explore the White Library, and reach the bottom of this Abyss
Fate / White Memoria
I agree, and that is what makes Stay Night the better story.
I came for the ultimate battle of ultimate destiny, but I stayed for Shirou’s wonderfully weird POV as he comes to terms with himself and his dream.
Your assessment is exactly why I dislike Apoc as much as I do. It steers into the legendary death match premise as hard as possible and struggles to give me anyone to care about between the bombastic fight scenes. Sieg is cardboard. Jeanne is waifu bait. Astolfo is a meme. I struggled to complete the anime because I didn’t give a shit about anyone on screen, no matter how cool they looked.
Kairi and Mordred had potential, but they were shooed out of the limelight by the Mighty Morphin’ Homunculus and his Big Titty Saberface GF.
I can’t blame Apoc for FGO, but I can see how Apoc was our first step down the path of gacha bucks.
Spoiler:
FZ FPS with Gilgamesh and Kiri in first person?
Edit: I just realized a Kiritsugu game would actually play an awful lot like QB, which was awesome, but now I think about it, they would need Remedy as an studio and Remedy wouldn't poke in this direction, because they are extraordinarily high and mighty.
I think if Waver wasn't in FZ I probably wouldn't be into Fate at all. Saber and Iri were nice, as was Diarmuid, but the rest of the cast oof.
SF is my jam, but again it stems from Flat & Waver. I'm pretty happy that Waver's side of things were elaborated on, and it didn't just end with what Uro wanted for him.
I just need one character who I'm attracted to both looks and personality wise and I'm pretty game for whatever. I don't think much, only consume.
Hence why the prototype ova was the first part of the franchise I sat down and looked into
Zero is so above the other spinoffs I don't even consider it a fanfic. Butch had to hammer in the fasteners and lay down the ballast on the railroad tracks of Nasu's preconceived ideas and he pulled off a nominal prequel with the aplomb of a self-standing work. It's no coincidence that we never hear of "Apoc/SF/EM2 fans" in the same way and frequency that "zero secondaries" were spoken of. One can only assume the man's understanding of writing is more advanced than the common LN trappings, or something.
I see Strange Fake as Narita wrestling with the parody of a grail war that its April Fools version was; taking the things it poked fun at (OC MASTERS! MORE AND CRAZIER SERVANTS! CLUSTERFUCK GRAIL WAR! MYSTERIES!F̷̧͐A̶̢̟͘N̴̮̥̋̒S̵̗͚͋̚E̶͛ͅŖ̴͕̿V̵̹̓̋Ī̴̝̭ C̵͉̘̎̐Ȩ̴̉̊͜!̴͈̝̉ ) and building a functional story that both retains the spirit of the original and isn't too alienating (note: the original's text certainly played the premise straight, but everything surrounding it, especially the background info on the site, provided the comedic framing). The expanded character roster can be read as an acceleration of the premise, a narrative necessity of planning out a multi-volume work, or Narita's own bad habits, but I find it more worthwhile to focus on how he uses it - the conflicts he sets up, the mysteries he attaches to each character, and the seeds of character development he embeds in the setup.
Conflicts should be self-evident, be it Mesopotamian grudge matches, Edgy Bodybuilders Raging Against Everything, churchies and vampires, Brits and Muricans, interrelations between both Servants and Masters; the threads between them serve to pull them unfailingly towards each other in the death spiral of mounting tension that defines Mr. Narita's wild ride.
Mysteries, either in the form of unanswered questions or plans only hinted at, are the little hooks that keep the reader's interest on the characters even when they stand outside of action, one tool in the repertoire of "cheats" with which the writer establishes an initial connection of interest between reader and character - think AYAKA and the red shadow, what Ishtar was cooking up, Dumas' plans for Clan Calatin, Pale Rider and how it can be extricated from Tsubaki, Huwawawawawawa, when the hell Faldeus was going to make a move, what in God's name is up with Flat, what is Watcher and how is it going to make a Lancer out of Σ, whether Σ will convert to Islam and marry Jihad-chan, and numerous others that were either answered or that I fail to recall). Incidentally, references are another one of those "cheats", establishing familiarity and verisimilitude of 'TM-ness' through the greater context; if this is a genuine sticking point, consider that the modus operandi of nu-TM is to give the things you already know a paintjob and sell them back to you and appreciate a fanfic writer spinning off of the original rather than aping it whenever he's out of ideas.
Characters operate in an uncertain state where their 'development' is desired as a mark of a competent writer but the means through which a character is considered to have legitimately 'developed' are ill-defined and often contrasted with examples from very different textual contexts. This pertains to what action "means" in SF, what goals the characters have, and what the limits of "development" are in the context of this work.
- The interiority of Shirou - the reader's access to his innermost thoughts - and the writing space three routes afford cannot be rightly juxtaposed against the means afforded to facilitate character X's development in SF; the narration can spare limited amounts of time in a character's 'headspace' to communicate their reaction and/or intent, which is then followed through in the 'common' scenes where the attention of these characters is drawn - the three (sometimes more) characters who oversee the action serve the purpose of consolidating these cluster events and drawing the bigger picture with their superior knowledge. Action is a vehicle of character so much as of plot, as action is the expression of a character's 'inner voice' - the space that readers conventionally assume character development happens, which cannot be communicated at length - being followed through.
- If "development" is understood to mean "a transformative process in a narrative through which a character becomes a different person than they initially were", it is possible that some SF characters will likely not attain a greater understanding of themselves, resolve an internal conflict, become better or worse people, and in general terms 'transform' from what they are - these are the Reeves, Prelatis, Jesters and Faldeus...es? (Faldei??) of SF. What they do have are goals for whose attainment they act, obstacles which they have to overcome (John-kun...), motivations to act upon and personal investment in the stakes of the undergoing conflict - to protect, to fuck with everyone, to waifu, and to the USA; the development of a character is not limited to problems of the mind such as those that plague Kiritsugu, Kotomine, Sabre et al in Zero. The limits of character development in SF are in some cases the resolution of their present situation, their immediate external conflicts and the state in which their irreducible kernel of character by which they are identified will emerge in from the HGW. Their role in the story might seem performative, but it is also necessary for action to emerge - notice what connects all those characters, facilitators and meddlers who may not change all that much themselves but whose actions effect significant change to those around them.
In talking about SF a few more questions may emerge: how fast should the plot move, what purpose does action serve, what separates the things that matter from the things that merely happen, and just what is "cool" for the sake of "cool"? It is useful to tackle them, if only for the sake of figuring out how to write good fanfics should proving SF is a bad one not work out.
- It should be reasonable to posit for the first two that the plot should move at a pace where narrative resolves logically in both directions - events happen for a reason and have consequences, both causally and in terms of character - with the action fulfilling the HGW genre quota while progressing aspects of the story's plot and/or characters in some form or fashion. I would say SF succeeds in this, as both preliminary conflict and full-blown chaos are the breeding grounds of character interplay, advancement, conflict whose aftershock ripples out in the web of intrigue connecting the cast to disclose secrets, challenge preconceived notions, and facilitate further developments; it, at any rate, has a quantifiable point, whether acknowledged or not.
- Some, mystifyingly, measure the progress of the plot in the author's killcount and so claim that nothing happens - in truth, the events that have occurred in the six existing volumes are both substantial and significant in advancing the narrative and establishing the footholds for further progress, and one can only hope the constant edging will have a satisfying upshot when it comes to a head (haha, im 12). Others decry a bloated cast and boring characters, well within their rights - at the same time the intolerably slow pace may be said to serve for no other purpose than to delay their demise; one could wait for the human-shaped blank Σ to arrive in situations where he has to exercise his personal judgment and rub brain cells with other characters for his own motivations to take shape (as seems to happen in v6), or for Gilgamesh to go out of commission for Tine to stop clutching at his buttcape and looking cute, but perhaps only death can cure them of irrelevance! Death is permanent and thus it matters; in truth, when the plot lumbers on as it lugs a dozen-plus PoVs along with it, it's difficult to see immediate payoff in the buildup - this is a valid critique if expressed as such, but I should hope the difference between "the plot develops too slowly for my tastes" and "things blow up and nothing happens" is apparent. "Cool" is a tool in the writer's kit, and for some it's what they signed up for, but bereft of substance, impact, import and consequence it is factually not. The plot threads are not dangling empty bait to lure you into reading a twelve year-old's novelisation of that time he took out all his toys from the closet and staged a battle royale with Stormtroopers, He-Man, Gandalf, Pikachu, a bunch of toy cars and a Fisher-Price castle. They are connecting and resolving at a given pace, and this pace may or may not strain one's long-term interest.
- I make a note about the development and connections between Servants even though I am of the opinion that Servants are galley-slaves who do not develop themselves so much as facilitate the development of the characters around them. Immutable paragons, beacons that guide humanity, yada yada, you've read this before. SF naturally spits on that notion: the cases of atypical Servants being all shades of fucked up are evident, though you can still count on a hero to deliver the odd life-changing advice. I broadly consider interactions that derive from or play off of mutual legends to be more derivative than transformative, but the seed of character potential that does exist in those Servants that are liable to change points inward, which affords the opportunity to hold Narita's ability to write internal development up to scrutiny. Jack I'll admit as a lukewarm case, whose conflict was mediated to a great extent by Flat's Flatitude and whose potential remains to be seen now that his Master isn't there to pacify him; Zealot has two-ish avenues of radical transformation in resolving her traumatic fixation through interaction with Spooky Hassan and/or learning to stop worrying and love the heathen, which while I want to believe can be done in a dramatic manner I wouldn't be averse to even if tackily executed, because she's precious and I love her. I am particularly fond of the egregious case of Alkeides, who reviles his divinity for marking him as an inhuman monster as much as himself for throwing away the humanity that his loved ones had seen in him, for squeezing out aspects of the character that don't pertain exclusively to protecting little girls, miscellaneous heroics plus-minus inarticulate madness, and hitting things really fucking hard, and it is vaguely disappointing that this is encapsulated as having more edges than a broken pisspot by most. On the other hand he makes people mad, so it's probably quid pro quo. Something also tells me his bloated powerset was written as a deliberate poke at the construct of pure powerlevels that 'Archer Herk' represents in the minds of fans but, similarly to calling AYAKA a jab at blank-slate MCs of nu-TM, that would by extension enable the habit of calling naff things subversive and intentionally bad, and I'm not having that on my conscience.
Conclusive remark: Strange Fake hits all the quintessential notes of a fanfic that wants to go off the rails but still arrive at a roughly identifiable destination. The issue is that it's one of those fanfics that have ten different setpieces developing in tandem and in relation to each other and as a result updates every six months at best with 500k-word chapters at a time. The plus is that the writer has pulled off fanfics like this before and will probably never stop writing until he literally dies. Also, he's pretty good, but he only gets a borderline 3-4 out of 5 stars until he finishes the fic and the people that dropped it years ago come back and read it in one go. Would probably make his own Reddit page for it if he could.
- - - Updated - - -
bottom text